FIFA organises sports reporting course for African journalists

The World Football governing body, FIFA, is organizing a series of courses for sports journalists in Africa including Zambia in the run-up to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

FIFA Chief Media Officer, Alain Leiblang, said here that the courses were meant to
sharpen the skills of African sports journalists in readiness for coverage of the
2010 World Cup finals in South Africa.

Leiblang said the designing of the training module for the football courses were at
an advanced stage.

Leiblang was addressing delegates attending the second World Congress of News Agencies.

Briefing senior news agency officials on the topic “Access rights and coverage of
major events: World Cup” he said FIFA accords news agencies priority in its events.

“We´re aware that due to expenses involved, not all newspapers, radio and television
stations in the world go to the world cup. These depend on news agencies to cover
the events for them It is against this background that we give agencies priority in
our programmes,” he said.

The FIFA official bemourned the growing trend in which the media were being restricted
from having access to football players on business grounds.

“As I talk to you now, you cannot have access to Zidane (French Footballer) because
he has signed exclusive contracts with a Television Station which prevents him from
being interviewed by any other media house. This is a sad situation of news freedom
versus business freedom,” he said.

FIFA, which has 215 million registered football players world wide, has been
organising world cup tournaments since the first championship held in Uruguay in
1913.

Two weeks ago, Leiblang led a team of journalists to inspect progress being made by
South Africa in preparing the facilities.

“Preparations are on track,” he told the delegates.